Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, the minister of education has stated that government is not overwhelmed by challenges confronting the Free Senior High School programme as being portrayed in some quarters.
His comment follows recent criticism about the programme and allegation of lack of funding which is threatening the sustainability of government’s flagship programme.
Speaking in an interview with Kojo Mensah on The Asaase Breakfast Show on Wednesday 9 June, the education minister said he has problem with critics who fail to look at challenges in the educational sector in a holistic manner.
“No, we are not overwhelmed. I am relaxed. I can’t be overwhelmed by opportunities to educate the citizens. You see when people talk about the challenges of the now, and don’t want to look at the challenges of the past, that is where I have a problem,” Adutwum said.
He added: “It is as if any small thing that you see in any school that is not right, it does not exist before Free SHS came, and if it did not exist before Free SHS came, then we should have had enough facilities to do a whole lot of things.”
Cheap political points
Adutwum said politicians must refrain from scoring cheap political points with challenges facing the educational system, describing the act as myopic.
“We appreciate that there will be challenges in any situation like this, and I will be the first to conceive. Remember I told you that there have been 46 schools in the last six years that were chronically underachieving. It’s six years, the data is not three years under Akufo-Addo. The problem has been there and this is the first time we are uncovering it for the world to see,” he said.
Fred Dzakpata
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